


Diminished Sixth

by foxysquid



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Artistic Sensibilities, Clones, Dominion War, Dominion problems, Gen, Music, clone problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxysquid/pseuds/foxysquid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sixth Weyoun begins to suspect himself of the worst possible crime--difference.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diminished Sixth

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Уменьшенная секста](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2217291) by [Seivarden_Vendaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seivarden_Vendaai/pseuds/Seivarden_Vendaai)



He closed his eyes. He remembered a certain morning. Waking up, looking out the window at the stars in the still-dark sky. Window. No, that wasn't what it was technically called, not in that Cardassian fortress where the only openings were narrow, defensive and cruel. He couldn't remember the real name for it, which was strange. In that remembered time, he _knew_ the name for it, but he couldn't access that information now, the actual word. For some reason, it was lost. His mind told him "window", and so he kept that word. Although he couldn't recall the real term, he felt this one was better. 

In his mind, he looked out the window at the stars. They were faint blurs of light upon a blur of darkness. His eyes would never allow him to see them as more than that, but he had never regretted it. Had he? He assigned no feelings of regret to the blur of stars in his memory. It was a bewildering feeling, remembering that moment, because he hadn't yet been alive on that morning. That had been the morning of the day he had died. Or that Weyoun Five had died, to be precise.

"Weyoun."

He opened his eyes and looked over at Damar, who was regarding him curiously, his head tilted slightly--nearly imperceptibly--to one side, in that way the Cardassians had. It had once irritated him.

"Yes, Damar?" He remembered many conversations with this man. Arguments. Sparring matches, really. He was always at odds with the Cardassians. They couldn't be trusted. They had joined the Dominion for reasons of their own. Not because they wished to serve the Founders.

"You seem--changed."

Weyoun Six sniffed. "It's only in your mind. I am, in fact, exactly the same. But I don't expect you to understand the complexities of the transition."

He had been alive only a few days. But he had been alive for many, many years. Which was true? One part of his mind told him one thing, assured him of his longevity, but another corner of his brain, perverse and resolute, revolted. He was newly born, it told him. His memories were a lie; they had been grafted on. 

He was supposed to take up the Weyoun continuum exactly where it had left off with the death of Weyoun Five in the transporter accident. But he was having trouble adjusting to the very transition he accused Damar of not understanding. For one thing, he could not remember the accident. He remembered stepping onto the pad, but the few fatal moments afterwards were a blank. Logically, he knew that the Founders had taken away those moments to spare him pain. But the perverse part of him insisted that if he was truly the same person, he would have all of that person's memories. 

What if other experiences had been taken from him without his realizing it? He was sure about the missing moments of his death largely because the gap was so jarring. One moment he had been stepping onto a transporter pad. The next, he had been waking up in a lab.

"You've been sitting there for at least ten minutes." Damar's growl interrupted his thoughts. "Drifting. And now you're doing it again."

"I am not drifting. I am considering the situation."

"We are _supposed_ to be conferring. You can consider on your own." Damar lifted his lip in a scowl and took another sip of kanar. He drank too much. Weyoun Five had pointed that out many times in the past. Weyoun Six decided that there was no need to say it again.

"Damar, you have said absolutely nothing worth responding to." He had always used this supercilious manner when dealing with the Cardassian leader. "When you do, I will respond to it. Not before." He heard his voice rising, felt frantic. This was--uncharacteristic. "But until then, leave me in peace!"

Damar rose to his feet. "I don't care what you say, Weyoun. You are changed." There was never any need for pleasantries between them--they had a healthy lack of respect for each other. Damar left the conference room without a word of farewell.

Weyoun remained seated. His hand, resting on the table, curled slowly into a fist. Damar did not realize the full import of what he had said, fortunately. To any Vorta, those words were nothing short of a death sentence. If he had changed, it meant the cloning process had failed. Variance was interpreted as a sign that the clone was lesser, defective. By decree of the Founders, any defective clone must suicide. Ideally, after politely informing his or her superiors that he or she was about to do so.

The conference room was dark, the lights kept low. It was warm. The Cardassians always kept their buildings warmer than most species found comfortable, but Weyoun had not been designed to mind the heat. "Computer," he said. The computer made no sound, but he could sense it waiting, listening, summoned by his word. "Play me a piece of music," he said.

The Cardassian computer spoke with a harsh, almost metallic voice. "Please specify."

"I have no specifications. Select a piece at random."

The computer hesitated. It was checking through its database, establishing an algorithm. It was a few moments before the music began to play. He didn't recognize the piece, unsurprisingly, and he didn't ask for an identification. Weyoun Six closed his eyes.

His heightened sense of hearing hearing allowed him to experience every nuance of the music, even some the composer and musicians had not been aware of. But his hearing did him no good. He could hear the music but not understand it. He could not even understand why it was that so many species felt compelled to express themselves in this fashion.

He had never understood the drive to create. It was not something that had been given to the Vorta. They were not makers of things. Diplomats, yes. Scientists, navigators, strategists. But they did not make. They had not been designed to do so. The founders had not found it necessary. Ever since he--as Weyoun Five--had come to the Alpha Quadrant, he had been collecting the things made by the Alpha Quadrant peoples. Paintings. Pottery. Glassware. Broken things and whole things, bad things and good things. He wanted to comprehend. To know what it was like to feel the drive to create. The Vorta could not even reproduce themselves. Most of them were sterile. And to account for the odd reproductively viable throwbacks, they were programmed to respond sexually to members of their own sex, making reproduction highly unlikely, to say the least. The Founders had diminished their sex drives, but it had proved difficult to eradicate them entirely, as in their original forms, they had been highly sexual, the females always capable of breeding. He himself had felt sexual desire only a few times in all his incarnations. No, the Vorta were not creators.

Art. Music. Why did some species make such things, things which served no practical function? In order to better understand the worlds the Dominion was conquering, he had been studying the arts. As Weyoun Five he had made no headway. He did not expect to do a great deal better as the Sixth.

The computer was playing something Cardassian, unsurprisingly. He had studied music enough to know that much. Cardassian music was dissonant, the disagreements of their woodwinds punctuated by the hisses and rattles of their percussive instruments. "Computer, play something from a Federation world."

"Please specify."

"Make a selection at random from your database of Federation music."

Another long hesitation from the computer before it began to play. Cardassian technology could be stubborn. The computers at Deep Space Nine had been faster. 

Deep Space Nine. He remembered the station. He had never set foot there, yet he remembered. The corridors had been of Cardassian design, yet well-lit after the fashion of the Federation, the Cardassian computers remade by Starfleet engineers. A marriage of styles. He wondered which he would have preferred, if he had been given a sense of aesthetics by the Founders. 

At Deep Space Nine he had had meetings every morning, similar to this morning's failed conference with Damar. But at the station near the wormhole his meetings had been with Dukat and Odo. His heart fluttered briefly at the memory of being so close to a Founder on a daily basis. Talking with him--actually talking, conferring rather than receiving orders. How different Odo was from the other Founders. 

It was still strange to remember something his eyes--his own weak, Vortan eyes--had never actually seen. He was having difficulty accepting those memories as his own. He had spoken to Damar of a transition, but there was not supposed to _be_ a transitional period. _You've changed_. The Cardassian leader was not particularly perceptive, yet he had noticed. How long would it be before the female Founder realized what had happened? It would not be long. He would be found out and asked to terminate himself.

He did not want to. That in itself was a sign that the cloning process had gone wrong. He closed his eyes. His ears told him all he needed to know. He let the music rule his senses. He concentrated on the sounds he was hearing, hoping they would obliterate all his stray thoughts.

And the thoughts that were not so much stray as insistent. _The war is wrong_. No, no, he couldn't think that. The Founders decreed that the war was necessary. It was for the good of the people of the Alpha Quadrant. In time, they would learn to love the order imposed by the Dominion. As the Vorta loved it.

Yet Odo believed that the war was wrong. Odo was a Founder as well, although he had not even allowed Weyoun Five to call him one. But that was what he was. What did it mean if a Founder decried the war? It meant that one Founder could think independently of the rest. The Vorta belonged to the Founders. If Weyoun Six felt differently about the war, then perhaps he was Odo's Vorta. One renegade Founder, one renegade Vorta. There was a symmetry to it, and the Founders valued symmetry. Sameness.

The founders did not make music. Music celebrated variance. The notes changing. Rising and descending. The Founders took on different forms, but always those forms were made up of the same substance: their god-flesh. It was all the Great Lake, eternal and invariable. Like the Vorta. The clones, all meant to be exactly the same as their predecessors. Efficient. Useful. It had always been that way.

Why, then, was his mind rebelling? _The war is wrong_.

Earlier that morning, the female Founder had told him that she was dying. An illness had infected the Great Lake. Everything was changing. The thought was stuck in his mind. For all that he concentrated on the music, focusing on the interval between one note and the next, trying to shut everything else out, it remained. _The war is wrong_.

Music was unlike the Founders. Music had no substance. When it was not being played, it disappeared. When it did exist, it was constantly in flux, true flux. Every time a piece of music was played, it was subtly different. Never the same. None of the races the Founders had engineered had any drive or aptitude for composing music.

Suddenly, Weyoun Six opened his eyes wide. He had heard a new sound. Slightly out of tune, but recognizably accompanying the music. It was an impossible sound, yet it continued for a few moments before he stopped it.

He had been humming along.


End file.
